


And It Is Always 1984

by TobyHooper



Category: 1984 - George Orwell, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Unhappy Ending, is there any other kind of ending in a dystopia?, totalitarianism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 11:00:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6372190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobyHooper/pseuds/TobyHooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you - that would be the real betrayal.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	And It Is Always 1984

John follows Mike Stamford into the lab. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it isn’t a slim man in a suit that must cost more than all the equipment around them. What’s an Inner Party man doing here, and how on earth could Mike think that _he’d_ need a flatmate?

The man stares back at John, coming to his own conclusions. But rather than dismissing John and his cheap jumpsuit and his regulation haircut, he stands and comes closer.

“Eurasia or Eastasia?” the man asks, and John blinks.

“But we’re only at war with Eastasia,” John replies. “We’ve never been at war with Eurasia.”

The man grimaces. He spins as if to go back to his chair, but then he turns again. His eyes narrow on John’s left sleeve. It’s frayed, already falling apart, and John flushes, but it makes the man smile. “You’ll do,” he says.

“Do for what?” John asks.

“A flatmate.”

John looks at Mike, who shakes his head, then up at the camera in the corner of the room. “Don’t be tedious,” the man says. “I told Stamford last week that I was looking for a flatmate, and now he brings you in. He could have no other reason, Stamford is much too dutiful a Party member to socialize at work.”

The man’s lips curl downwards as he says ‘Party’, and John can’t stop himself from glancing at the camera again. This is dangerous, as dangerous as anything John faced in Eastasia. His heart is pounding but his voice is calm as he says, “I don’t even know your name.”

“Sherlock Holmes. And the address is 221B Baker Street. I’ll see you at five o’clock tomorrow.” He winks and is gone.

*

“You’re a - you’re a what?”

“Consulting detective. The only one in the world. I invented the position.”

Sherlock watches John mouth the words. He does that, whenever Sherlock uses a term he’s not familiar with. It’s somewhat endearing, but mostly infuriating - people are idiotic enough without government-mandated illiteracy.

“What do you do?”

“When the Ministry of Love is out of their depth - which is always - they come to me for help. I solve crimes, but only the interesting ones.”

John’s reactions are fascinating. At first, he’d been terrified by almost everything Sherlock said, though he hid it well, his only tell a nervous tug on a fraying sleeve. As they talk, though, fear gives way to curiosity. Sherlock’s disdain for Miniluv impresses him. It’s as if he can’t tell privilege from treason. Has he never met an Inner Party member before?

No, of course not. Sherlock sees it suddenly in the scar on his right arm and the uneasy way he wears his blue jumpsuit. John is a Prole, or rather, was born a Prole. Field-trained in medicine due to a shortage that had him stitching up his own wounds. Capable and brave enough to try the unheard of - jump classes - but mild enough to actually manage it. 

Mild _seeming_. There’s a recklessness in him. Sherlock must be the only one who can see it, or John would have long ago found himself in an interrogation room. But Sherlock will not be the one to report him - he's too useful. And after all, there’s a recklessness in Sherlock too.

*

John has been ignoring the telescreens, but halfway through their examination of the body, it’s time for Two Minutes Hate.

“No, no, no!” shouts Sherlock, as Lestrade turns away from him and towards the telescreen.

If only it were Two Minutes Irritation, John thinks, trying not to grin.

Sherlock gives up on Lestrade and goes to Anderson, dragging him forcefully from the room. He returns and stands by John, muttering. “Last time this happened, Anderson _attacked the corpse_ in patriotic fervor. Idiot.”

This particular film is not one John has seen before, but Two Minutes Hate are always the same. Clips from the Eastasian battlefield, gunfire and grinding and scratching noises, and the eyes of James Moriarty as he spews his insane philosophy at the screen. 

“Big Brother! Big Brother! Big Brother!” John chants along with Lestrade. Sherlock doesn’t chant anything, but he doesn’t say anything either. Not until it’s over.

“Now,” he says. “Let’s get back to an _actual_ crime.”

Lestrade freezes, his gaze going to the telescreens. John’s goes to Sherlock.

“Ungood?” Sherlock asks.

“A bit ungood, yeah.”

Since the day John Watson met Sherlock Holmes, he’s been waiting for the moment when Sherlock goes too far, when the Thought Police finally come for him, for them both. But nothing happens. There’s silence for nearly a minute, and then Anderson knocks, wanting to be let back in.

*

They’re out of hot water, and it’s hateful. What’s the point of being an oppressive elite if you can’t even have a nice bath? 

Sherlock wraps a towel around his waist and pushes his way out of the room, in too much of a strop to even bother with his bathrobe. Tea, then, damn it. He’ll have hot water by the kettle.

It takes an appallingly long time for the most observant man in Oceania to realize John is staring at him. 

Sherlock gets the kettle going, but only just. He pulls the milk carton from the fridge and it crumples a little where he’s holding it too tight.

“Sherlock…” John has not stopped staring. Why hasn’t he stopped staring? The heat in his eyes is pure thoughtcrime. He’s always the cautious one, the paranoid one, the perfect Party member - 

Oh. _Oh._ But he hasn’t always been a Party member. Those formative years as a Prole, living partly free and mostly forgotten, no school, no hope, just work, work and work and when you’re old enough, fucking.

John is licking his lips. It makes Sherlock’s blood run hot and then cold.

It’s another lie, a lie he hadn’t realized he believed. _War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength._

_Sex is shame._

“Thank you, John,” says Sherlock, and if John looks a little confused that’s hardly new. Sherlock tosses away the towel.

Not long after, the kettle shrills. John has two fingers inside him and Sherlock insists they ignore it. Hot water, he’s decided, is overrated.

*

John has never met a man as free as Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock insults whoever he likes, goes to work whenever he pleases, ignores the telescreens and the Two Minutes Hate and the police unless it's a crime scene. When he gets bored, he shouts such violence at the cameras in their flat that John trembles with sick anticipation. He takes unlicensed drugs and has an unlicensed fiddle, and when he plays it's a far greater heresy than anything he could put to words.

But Sherlock never tells him why he's allowed to do this. Never explains how he became a consulting detective, or why he wanted an assistant or a flatmate for that matter, or how he picked John of all people, or what he sees in John at all. He looks at John sometimes as though he wants to explain every secret, but those moments pass quickly, his lips tightening as he looks away.

John has never met a man as free as Sherlock Holmes, but that doesn't mean he's not wearing shackles.

*

"John. John! Stay awake!"

John's head lolls to the side, his eyes still open but glazed with pain. Sherlock meets them, then drags his gaze back to the stab wound.

"You need to stay awake," he says, "so you can tell me what to do."

"Apply - " John gasps. "Apply pressure - "

Sherlock does so. He follows every one of John's groaned instructions. But when he looks up, there's still no ambulance. "Damn it, man, haven't you called for help?" Officer Garridebs does not respond, only writes something in a little notepad.

"I need to go," Sherlock tells John, "I need to leave you to get help." The light goes out of John's eyes then, so completely that Sherlock almost mistakes it for the end. He leans down, and whispers in a terrified rush, "I would do anything for you. So please, stay alive for me."

Garridebs writes another note.

Sherlock goes then. It's the best of several impossible options. Later, a plain-faced medic tells him John will be fine.

Idiot. "None of us are fine," Sherlock snaps, and pushes past her into John's room.

*

John has always known this day was coming. He’s resigned himself to it. But as the black car rolls up beside him, he thinks, couldn’t we have had just a bit longer?

The woman who greets him is beautiful and indifferent and about what John expected. The place she takes him to is not. The person she takes him to is not. They arrive not at Miniluv but a covered parking garage, and waiting there is Big Brother himself, leaning on an umbrella.

John is surprised by the rush of affection he feels. It’s like a drug in his veins, clouding his thoughts. Then his soldier’s training kicks in. He walks forward with even steps, face blank. His fingers itch for a weapon even as his heart aches for approval.

Big Brother gives him neither. Instead he asks, “What’s your opinion of Sherlock Holmes?”

John clears his throat. “Haven’t got one.”

“Most people form an opinion after two minutes with him. You’ve had two months. Surely you can scrape one together.”

“My only opinions are the ones the Party gives me.”

Big Brother hums. “A little on the nose, I think.”

John doesn’t reply. What can he say? There are cameras everywhere, spies everywhere. Nothing he says will save Sherlock, or himself.

“Let me be direct. There are two possible outcomes for you. In the first, you denounce Sherlock Holmes. As a reward, you are made a member of the Inner Party, with all the attendant privileges to which you’ve grown accustomed. In the second, you are brought to the Ministry of Love.” He waves his hand, as though the details are distasteful to him. “I hope I won’t have to threaten you.”

“You do whatever you have to,” says John, “but I won’t denounce Sherlock.”

“You’re very loyal,” says Big Brother. “Pity it’s not to the Party.”

*

When John isn’t home at his usual time, Sherlock thinks little of it, but as the night deepens and darkens he begins to understand the paranoia he finds so tiresome in others.

His usual methods turn up nothing. Not even his homeless network will tell him anything. There is only one person who can thwart him so completely.

“Mummy would be so pleased to see us lunching together,” says Mycroft, several frantic days later. They’re in a secluded corner of a Minipax cafe. The location is Mycroft’s choice.

There’s an insult there about the pleasure Mycroft takes in lunches, but Sherlock gives it up immediately when he spots John. John limps over to a table on the opposite side of the cafe, settles down in a chair and leans back without ease or relief. He has no visible scars but oh, what Sherlock can deduce.

Mycroft will have tried to get John to denounce him. That he couldn’t is very little comfort.

“It’s time you gave up your absurd hobby, and came to work for me, Sherlock.”

“And if I don’t?” Sherlock grits out.

Mycroft is silent. A short, blonde-haired woman joins John at his table and takes his hand. John looks down at it, then up at her, his expression empty of anything like love.

“That’s Mary,” says Mycroft. “She’s an excellent shot.” He turns to Sherlock. “I know it galls you to admit it, but you wouldn’t be in this position if you’d followed my advice. Your resistance is childish. People have suffered.”

Sherlock wants to grab his words from the air and push them back down his throat, wants to choke Mycroft with them. But he can’t stop Mycroft from saying it, and he can’t stop it from being true.

“Caring is not an advantage,” says Big Brother.


End file.
